The present invention relates to agent based systems and more particularly to a system which automatically obtains information based on visual indicia selection and navigation.
Graphical representation of information for a user is becoming much more commonplace as more graphic displays with higher resolution and larger viewing areas are becoming more commonplace than sharpened pencils in modern offices. Early examples of these systems include the Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) stations popularized by Lockheed for designing airplanes. These stations utilized fixed, predefined libraries of symbols to create visual depictions of commonplace items found in engineering drawings. Later, companies such as IBM began applying this technology to database applications to graphically depict relational databases and allow a user to interact in an intuitive fashion with these databases. During this same era, Xerox Parc popularized iconology systems with the advent of the Xerox Star computer system and ushered in a mouse driven approach to graphical computing that was commercialized successfully by Apple with the MacIntosh computer system.
Today, a user is bombarded with icons and windows and other information that requires skilled interaction with sophisticated applications to identify and process information on a personal computer. A requirement for an intuitive interface to massive amounts of information has existed for many years, and is still absent in the marketplace.
According to a broad aspect of a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system exposes users to lots of interesting items using very simple operations. Given that computers cannot yet read minds and that people are poor at precisely articulating interests, the problem becomes one of approximating interests. Users are gradually and deliberately moved through a product space, giving them time to select their interest. For example, if a user clicks on a picture of a baseball, the system does not immediately assume that they are interested in baseballs. The user""s interest might be sporting goods, ball sports, baseball equipment, or softball equipment that is their actual interest. By gradually moving users through a product space, time is allotted to the user to differentiate these interests.
The system allows users to navigate through a collection of visual items (e.g., consumer products, homes, wallpaper patterns) using a few simple operations such as xe2x80x9cmore of thisxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cless of that.xe2x80x9d To build a display system in accordance with a preferred embodiment one must (1) construct a collection of items (a database), and (2) implement the operations. The operations are user interactions, and thus must be fast enough to feel interactive. Generally speaking, the execution of an operation should not take more than a couple of seconds.
The system begins by displaying diverse items, where xe2x80x9cdiversexe2x80x9d is relative to both the database and the user. The database itself constrains diversity (we cannot display items not in the database). Further, if we know something of the user""s interests, we can further constrain diversity (e.g., if the user hates silk shirts, don""t show silk shirts). For example, a diverse set of items from a haberdashery database might include shoes, shirts, suites, ties and jackets. The two basic operations are more(x) and less(x) where x is a specific item. More(x) results in the display of a new collection of items that, collectively, are more similar to x than the items previously displayed. Less(x) results in a new display containing items that collectively are less like x. Thus the crux of the matter, at run-time, is the similarity of items.